Conventional folding of garments is oriented to display in retail sales. A substantial portion of retail sales clerk time is devoted to refolding clothes after inspection by a potential customer. Clothing folded for retail display can only be stored or transported in bags, boxes, or other containers or require pins and clips to retain the display configuration.
Well known retailers train their new employees in procedures for example: How to Fold a T-shirt the Gap Way    “1 Lay the t-shirt flat with the front of the t-shirt facing up. The side of the t-shirt should be facing you, meaning that the shirt's collar should be to your right and the bottom of the t-shirt should be to your left.    2 Put your left index finger in the middle of the t-shirt and “draw” a line toward you until you get about 1½ inches from the side of the shirt. Pinch both sides of the fabric at this point with your left hand.    3 Keeping the first pinch secure, use your right hand to draw another imaginary line from the first pinch up the t-shirt to the seam on the shoulder. Pinch the front and back fabric here with your right hand. Now both hands are pinching the t-shirt.    4 Bring your right hand down past your left hand to the bottom of the t-shirt directly under your left hand. Your arms will be crossed. (Again, imagine a line going from your left—pinched—hand to the bottom of the t-shirt.) Pinch this fabric with the right hand so that your are now pinching four layers of t-shirt with that hand: the front and back of the shoulder seam and the front and back of the bottom.    5 Make sure the t-shirt looks like a mess of fabric at this point. That means you're doing it the right way.    6 Holding firmly to all pinches, lift the t-shirt from the flat surface while uncrossing your arms.    7 Shake the t-shirt until it hangs from your hands smoothly. It should no longer look like a mess of fabric.    8 Lower the t-shirt back onto the flat surface sleeve-first so that the front of the sleeve that's hanging touches the surface, creating a horizontal fold symmetrical to the one created by your pinches.    9 Now, lay the t-shirt down towards you (with the front facing up), and you're done.”
Other methods of folding/rolling shirts apply only to sleeveless or short-sleeve shirts. In some methods the shirts are folded with the collar face down and the short sleeves folded back underneath the bottom half of the shirt. Other methods of folding T-shirts involve crossing your arms to grasp both the hem of the shirt and the top of the T near the collar. None of these methods retain their shape unless left undisturbed. In some methods the shirts are folded in two parallel folds and then rolled from collar to near the hem. In some cases the hem is first folded into a cuff which is used to enclose the rolled shirt. This tubular result is more suitable for storage and packing but makes identification of which shirt is which more difficult as all distinguishing characteristics are hidden by the hem. Furthermore rolling sleeves does not result in a thin tubular object. It becomes more like a fabric dumbbell. Thus it can be appreciated that what is needed is a method to distinguish a folded long sleeved garment from other folded shirts and enable the folded long sleeve garment to be easily packed, transported, and stored without necessary refolding after translation or disturbance.